2026-08-13 –, Room 5
For better or worse, we live in a world where being online is essential for being known. This applies not only to people, but also to ideas, algorithms, and software created by Julia programmers. Your research may be groundbreaking and your algorithms elegant, but if they are not accessible online, they are unlikely to be seen or used.
Many researchers recognize this and try to publicize their work through papers, talks, and blog posts. However, the most effective way to communicate a computational idea is not just to describe it, but to let people interact with it. A web app allows users to explore a model, test an algorithm, or visualize results directly, making the value of the work immediately clear.
The problem is that most scientists and researchers lack the time or expertise to build web applications. Traditional web frameworks lower the barrier somewhat, but they still require knowledge of web development concepts and introduce friction when all you want is a simple, interactive interface to your Julia code.
Magic.jl is designed to remove this friction. Aimed at scientists and researchers, it provides a simple, Julia-native way to turn algorithms and solutions into interactive web apps, in the same spirit that Streamlit does for Python.
Magic.jl has a distinctive design that sets it apart from existing web app frameworks in the Julia ecosystem. Most current frameworks assume a traditional web architecture based on request–response cycles, declarative user interfaces, and reactive interactions. Magic.jl, by contrast, is built around direct execution of Julia code. A Magic web app is simply a Julia script that is rerun from top to bottom on every user interaction. This script-centered design makes the execution flow easy to reason about and aligns naturally with how scientists and researchers typically write and think about code.
In this talk, we will:
- Introduce Magic's core concepts and features
- Discuss possible use cases
- Demonstrate it with example web applications
- Explain how it compares to other web app frameworks
I've been programming for a living and for fun for more than 10 years now. I have a master in Operations Research, with a focus on heuristics and mathematical optimization. And I play the keyboard at my local church Esperança in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.